One thing that we’ve noticed within this past year is the notion that the more popular your Web site is (the more visitors that you have, the more pages those visitors click through, and the longer the visitors stay on your site), the better the likelihood that your Web site will rank. This isn’t an altogether “new” notion (Brett Tabke of WebmasterWorld discussed this in 2003), but I’ve seen more evidence of this within this past year.

The search engines want to provide searchers with the best results possible. How they define “best results” may be up for debate, but they do a pretty good job.

Years ago, you might have to click through 20 pages of search results to find what you were looking for. Nowadays, through better algorithms and personalized search, few will bother to click through to page two of their results. Instead, they’ll probably search again using a different keyword phrase.

So, now more than ever, it’s a push for the top 10 results in the search engines. Yes, personalization and other factors can determine what the “real” top 10 is. But, generally speaking, if you can follow the practical advice that has been relevant since 2000 and apply what we’re seeing as “an important factor,” you’ll have a greater likelihood of being found within that first page.

A Full Service SEO Initiative

Rae Hoffman (AKA “Sugarrae”) recently wrote an excellent piece, “You Don’t Need SEO to Rank in Google.” This gem of a column provides a case study, which I love, and contains great information that more SEOs should share. Real examples. Validated results. True stories. “Reality” SEO, as it were.

What Hoffman basically shows is that Google will find out that your Web site is popular and rank it when it’s relevant for its searchers. She also points out that once the Web site becomes less relevant/less trafficked, rankings begin to fall and traffic drops.

To keep the momentum, you must continue promoting. You must have momentum in your SEO and general marketing efforts. You must keep a steady flow of traffic coming to your Web site.

Related articles

We (SEOs) have often said that SEO isn’t a “set it and forget it” affair. This is truer today than it’s ever been. It’s incumbent upon you, fellow SEOs, to think “bigger” than you have in the past. You must become more of an “interactive marketing agency.”

Yeah, SEO is a lot tougher now than “back in the day.” You may have noticed that the SEM conference agendas are looking a bit different, too.

We’re talking about broader issues than the “traditional” organic and paid search. You’re hearing more discussion on social media marketing on SEO industry Web sites.

Is “social media marketing” really “organic search”? Well, no. However, they’re so closely aligned that you can’t talk about one without discussing the other.

Nowadays, the same can be said for all of the things that I’ve mentioned above. We can’t talk about organic SEO without also addressing other methods of marketing that would make your Web site more relevant, popular, and trafficked. They go hand in hand.

As we get underway in 2009, every SEO needs to brush up on general interactive marketing strategies. We need to better understand how to negotiate media plans that will deliver upon our CPA goals and look for ways in which these media plans can be synergistic with our SEO efforts.

Wanted: Quarterly Site Review Submissions

Do you have a Web site you’d like me to review from an SEO perspective? Now’s the time to contact me. I’ll publish my next quarterly site review next week, so get your requests in early (as in “now”).

Want to stay on top of the latest search trends?

Get top insights and news from our search experts.

Related reading

Optimizing your 404 page is unlikely to top your list in terms of digital marketing priorities. However, it’s not something you should overlook or try to rush - especially if your site is frequently changing URLs.

Virtual reality (VR) has been the talk of the town for a little while now and its marketing potential is getting difficult to ignore. But despite the clear benefits of VR, businesses are still hesitant about diving in. Can VR content be found using search engines? Is it even possible to optimize virtual reality content for search? We take a look at how to do VR SEO.

Speak to pretty much anyone about SEO and the rhetoric will largely be in regards to the "Big G". But there are countries in the world where Google is not king, and one of them is China. If you want to optimize for the second-largest economy in the world, here's what you need to know about Baidu, China's primary search engine.

Google Search Console has benefited from some significant upgrades over the past decade. That said, it is still far from perfect and few would argue that it provides a complete package in its current guise. Therefore, Google's recent announcement of some changes to the platform was very warmly received by the SEO community.

Here we’ll take a look at the basic things you need to know in regards to search engine optimisation, a discipline that everyone in your organisation should at least be aware of, if not have a decent technical understanding.